20,000 days since wild day for Ted Williams

This may be hard for a younger fan to understand, but Ted Williams was every bit as unpopular, in his time, as Albert Belle . . . Ted Williams was despised everywhere in the American League, including Boston for at least the first half of his career. He took constant actions to reinforce that relationship. He splattered water coolers, including glass ones. He made obscene gestures at fans, carried on decades-long vendettas against selected reporters, sometimes didn’t treat his family well, sometimes didn’t hustle or even make any show of hustling in the field or on the bases, was obsessed with his own success, was contemptuous of coaches and some managers, and alternated, in his dealings with the fans, between rugged charm and uncharted rudeness.

20,000 days ago today, Ted Williams had one of those days that explained why he was so widely maligned while simultaneously revealing his impressive abilities as a player.

It was a Red Sox-Yankee game typified by great pitching, not hitting, as it went into extra innings tied 0-0. Yankee legend-to-be Don Larsen was having an outstanding day. In his 10+ innings pitching, he allowed only four hits—three to Boston right fielder Jackie Jensen. Ted Williams could manage no more than a walk against him. Boston starter Willard Nixon matched Larsen frame-for-frame, though.

For Williams, the fun began in the 11th inning in the still-scoreless game. With two outs and no one on in the top of the 11th at Fenway, Williams misplayed a Mickey Mantle fly ball, allowing the young star to scamper to second base. Fans clearly didn’t think much of Williams’ defense; they booed him loudly. Williams didn’t react to it right then and there—but he wasn’t the kind of man to forgive and forget.

Yogi Berra came up next and lined one to left over Williams’ head. Teddy Ballgame redeemed his previous screw up by making a over-the-shoulder catch to retire the side and end New York’s scoring threat. Now was the time for Williams to show the fans what he thought of them.

As he made his way toward the dugout, he spat at some of his detractors in the stands. Then, as he reached the top of the dugout, he spat at the press box for good measure. Then, once in the dugout, he spat toward the Yankee dugout. The New York players mocked Williams a bit before the game, because he’d had two previous spitting incidents in the last month at Fenway. He was going to show them Ted Williams was going to do what he wanted.

And the inning was still only halfway over.

As upsetting and potentially unsettling as the top of the inning may have been for Williams and Boston, the Yanks played the bottom of the inning like a team out of sync. Boston’s first two batters of the inning reached on back-to-back infield errors. Then Don Larsen walked Red Sox second baseman Billy Klaus to fill the bases with no outs. And guess who was coming up next? Yes, the Splendid Spitter himself—Teddy F. Williams.

The Yankees’ manager had seen enough of Don Larsen and inserted Tommy Byrne in relief. Calling on Byrne was an interesting choice. While Byrne, a southpaw, gave the Yankees a platoon advantage on the left handed leftfielder, Byrne had a weakness that played right into one of Williams’ main strengths: he had terrible control In his career, Byrne walked 1,037 men in just 1,362 innings. He’s the only pitcher in baseball history to pitch less than 1,700 innings and walk over 1,000 batters. Conversely, Williams had one of the greatest batting eyes in history, drawing a base on balls over 2,000 times in 10,000 PA.

You know how this plays out, right? Yeah, ball four, batter take your base, all runners advance one base—Red Sox win 1-0 on a walk-off walk in the 11th inning to Ted Williams right after he made a bad play in the field and had multiple instances of poor sportsmanship between innings.

Williams wasn’t quite done yet. With a flurry of emotions coursing through him—booed for one misplay, vindicated on another, and then silencing his critics with the game winning plate appearance—a teed-off Williams flipped his bat 40 feet in the air as he made his way to first base.

The Red Sox won—and fined Williams $5,000 for his actions. After all, it was Williams’ third spitting incident at Fenway in under a month.

Hell of a ballplayer, that Ted Williams. But also at least a little bit of a jackass.

That event has a nice big round number attacked to it today—a 20,000 “day-versary” but many other baseball events celebrate their day-versary and anniversary today as well. Here are some of the most prominent, with the better ones in bold for those who wish to skim.

Day-versaries

4,000 days since the Angels whack four home runs in the fifth inning – by Darin Erstad, Mo Vaughn, Tim Salmon, and Garrett Anderson. The last three shots were consecutive.

4,000 days since a great Pedro Martinez–Roger Clemens pitching duel. Martinez and the Red Sox win 2-0 on a two-run ninth inning homer by Trot Nixon. The two pitchers combine to allow nine hits while fanning 22 batters (including 13 for Clemens).

9,000 days since White Sox Joe Cowley tossed one of the worst thrown no-hitters of all-time. He walks seven and says after the game he just felt fortunate to get out of the sixth inning, in which he walked the bases loaded with no outs. Sox win, 7-1 over the Angels. He’ll only play eight more games in his major league career.

9,000 days since Barry Bonds had possibly his worst day in the big leagues: 0-for-5 with four strikeouts. He had two other four-K games without a hit, but this was the only one with five outs in all made on the day.

15,000 days since Al Kaline had maybe his worst day at the plate: 0-for-4 with a career-high tying three Ks, and a GIDP.

15,000 days since Reds’ ace pitcher Jim Maloney tore his Achilles tendon while running the bases. He’ll never pitch again.

Anniversaries

1891 Tony Mullane, a career 280+ game winner, allowed two inside the park home runs in one game. This was the third time it happened to him in 16 days. Only happens to him two other times in his decade-plus long career.

1919 Pitchers duel: Yankee-Senators game ends tied 0-0 after 12 innings. New York can muster only two hits against (who else?) Senators ace Walter Johnson. New York pitcher Jack Quinn allows 10 hits (including one to Johnson) and four walks, but none come around to score. For Quinn, it’s his first complete game shutout in five years. He came up as a Yankee in 1909, went to the Braves in 1913, and then the Federal League in 1914-15. Then he went to the minors and was still trying to re-establish himself at age 35 with the Yankees again. He does and will stay in the big leagues until 1933, at which time he’s 49 years old, the oldest real MLB player of all time.

1930 Indians get 27 hits and score in every inning accept the eighth in 25-7 win over A’s. They do it without hitting a single home run.

1931 Hall of Famer Chuck Klein belted his 100th career home run. Less than 40 people had ever done that.

1932 Wild Bill Hallahan lives up to his nickname, with three wild pitches in one inning

1932 13-year-old eighth grader Joe Schulz steals second and third bases as a pinch runner in a Texas League game. If you’ve ever read Ball Four, yes this is the same Joe Schulz who managed the Seattle Pilots.

1936 Mel Ott is a one-man wrecking crew, leading Giants to 13-12 win over the Phillies. He went 3-for-5 with a double, home run, a career-high 8 RBIs, and scored three runs.

1944 Hal Trosky stole home in 16th inning of White Sox’s 4-2 win over the A’s.

1945 Hall of Famer George Kell hit his only inside the park home run. As it happens it’s his second career homer.

1946 First night game at Braves Field. Giants win 5-1 before 37,407, the largest crowd there in 13 years. It’s also the 1,000 game ever helmed by Braves skipper Billy Southworth, who ended the night with a 629-356 record.

1949 White Sox score in every inning in 12-8 win over The Red Sox at Comiskey. So I assume they didn’t get a chance to bat in the ninth then.

1977 Ted Turner manages the Braves for a day, they lose 2-1 for the 17th straight loss. It’s a strange day to manage, as the opposing Pirates win their 11th straight that day—and that’s the longest winning streak opposing manager Chuck Tanner ever had. Also in that game, Phil Niekro lost his seventh straight decision, a career worst. His numbers in that spell: 0-7, 9 GS, 4 CG, 58 IP, 72 H, 43 R, 40 ER, 35 BB, 41 K, and a 6.21 ERA. I love that he still has four CG in it.

1978 Gaylord Perry, who balked only six times in his 5,000+ IP career, balked twice in one game.

1999 Mirror image: Bobby Jones faces off against Bobby Jones when Mets and Rockies play. It’s the first time in MLB history opposing starters have the same first and last names. They have different middle names, as Bobby J. is a Met, and Bobby M. a Rockie.

2000 Brewers 14, Cubs 8 in the longest nine-inning game in NL history: four hours and 22 minutes.

2001 A’s 7, Red Sox 6. This was an odd loss because in the bottom of the ninth the would-be tying run would’ve scored—accepts a trailing run tries to advance and is called out for an inning and game ending double play before the man on third can score.

2001 Rick Ankiel, one day after tossing five wild pitches, is sent to the minors to work on his control.

Comments

So, Ted was in a bad mood that day. He had his days – they were relatively few – when a dark mood seemed to descend, because he was so hard on himself.

I suspect most of us have had days when we did embarrassing things we wished we could call back later. Ted certainly wanted to call back some of his worst moments, confessing to mortification later on. Of course, most of us aren’t on the public stage when we embarrass ourselves.

The Bill James quotation surprises me. I’ve been an amateur student of Ted Williams for my whole life, and have written several books about him. He made different impressions on different people, and I’ve tried to be straightforward about that in my writing. In TED WILLIAMS AT WAR, for instance, I interviewed about 40 Marines who served with him in Korea. Most were fine with him, some really enjoyed him, and there were three or four who pretty much hated him. He rubbed a few people the wrong way.

One group of people who almost unreservedly loved Ted Williams were his fellow ballplayers. With them, he was typically generous to a fault. The notion that he was despised in the American League just doesn’t compute, based on all I know. I can imagine a handful of players not liking him, the way some people don’t like other people. No one is universally popular, and people in the limelight (particularly ones who are shy) can find unwanted attention uncomfortable. There’s a reason Williams liked to keep to himself – fishing, or hunting, or(when with the Marines) working in the squadron darkroom rather than hanging out the Officer Club.